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How does petroleum (oil products) become a pollutant in the coastal and marine environment?
Accidental or deliberate, operational discharges and spills of oil from ships, especially tankers, offshore platforms and pipelines, is the most obvious and visible cause of oil pollution of the marine environment. As summarized by NOAA: "The kind of oil spill we usually think about is the accidental or intentional release of petroleum products into the environment as result of human activity (drilling, manufacturing, storing, transporting, waste management). Examples would be things like well blowouts, pipeline breaks, ship collisions or groundings, overfilling of gas tanks and bilge pumping from ships, leaking underground storage tanks, and oil-contaminated water runoff from streets and parking lots during rain storms".
However, oils enter the ocean from a variety of sources, and both natural sources (large quantities) and land-based sources account for a large part of the total annual input of oil to the marine environment.
Also, hydrocarbons enter the ocean not merely as "wet" oil products but also as gaseous air pollutants. Hydrocarbons from vapours deriving from the loading and unloading of oil at different stages from extraction to consumption, in the form of non-methane volatile organic compounds (nmVOCs), is one example. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from incomplete combustion (exhaust gases and flue gases) is another category of gaseous hydrocarbons that enter the marine environment as oil pollution.
ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL INPUTS OF OIL TO THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT
In a report published in 2002 by the National Research Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the average total worldwide annual release of petroleum (oils) from all known sources to the sea has been estimated at 1.3 million tonnes. However, the range is wide, from a possible 470,000 tonnes to a possible 8.4 million tonnes per year. According to the report, the main categories of sources contribute to the total input as follows:
- natural seeps: 46%
- discharges from consumption of oils (operational discharges from ships and discharges from land-based sources): 37%
- accidental spills from ships; 12%
- extraction of oil: 3%
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